Are Ethiopian diabetic patients protected from financial hardship?

Globally, diabetes mellitus exerts an economic burden on patients and their families. However, the economic burden of diabetes mellitus and its associated factors were not well studied in Ethiopia. Therefore, the aim of this study is to assess the economic burden of diabetes mellitus and its associated factors among diabetic patients in public hospitals of Bahir Dar city administration, Ethiopia.

Across sectional study was conducted on 422 diabetic patients. The patients were selected by simple random sampling method. The prevalence-based model was used to estimate the costs on patients' perspective. Bottom up and human capital approaches were used to estimate the direct and indirect costs of the patients respectively. Wealth index was constructed using principal component analysis by SPSS. Forty percent of nonfood threshold level was used to measure catastrophic diabetic care expenditure of diabetic patients. Whereas, the World Bank poverty line (the $1.90-a-day poverty line) was used to measure impoverishment of patients due to expenses of diabetes mellitus care. Data were entered by Epi data version 3.1and exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Simple and multiple logistic regressions were used.

Four hundred one respondents were interviewed with response rate of 95%. We found that 239 (59.6%) diabetic patients incurred catastrophic diabetic care expenditure at 40% nonfood threshold level. Whereas, 20 (5%) diabetic patients were impoverished by diabetic care spending at the $1.90-a-day poverty line. Educational status of respondent, educational status of the head of household, occupation and wealth status were statistically associated with the catastrophic diabetic care expenditure.

The study revealed that the economic burden of diabetic care is very disastrous among the less privileged populations: the less educated, the poorest and unemployed. Therefore, all concerned stakeholders should design ways that can reduce the financial hardship of diabetic care among diabetic patients.